poetry anthology · 2020. 10. 7. · poetry anthology. acknowledgements prepared on 11th june 2019....

Poetry AnthologySupplementThe Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) English LiteraturePoetry Anthology Supplement

Collection D - Belonging

Belonging Cluster Booklet to be added to GCSE (9-1) English Literature Poetry Anthology. Acknowledgements prepared on 11th June 2019. Amended 14th June 2019.

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

The poem ‘Island Man’ by Grace Nichols, first published in The Fat Black Woman’s Poems by Grace Nichols, published by Virago, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, copyright © 1984 by Grace Nichols. Reprinted by permission of the rights holder; The poem ‘Peckham Rye Lane’ by Amy Blakemore, published in Humbert Summer, Eyewear Publishing, 2015. Reproduced by permission of the author; The poem ‘Us’ by Zaffar Kunial, published in Us, Faber & Faber, 2018, copyright © Zaffar Kunial. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London, W11 1JN; The poem ‘In Wales, waiting to be Italian’ by Imtiaz Dharker, published in Over the Moon, Bloodaxe Books, 2014. Reproduced by per-mission of Bloodaxe Books, www.bloodaxebooks.com; The poem ‘Jamaican British’ by Raymond Antrobus, published in The Perseverance, Penned in the Margins, 2018. Reproduced by permission of the publisher; The poem ‘My Mother’s Kitchen’ byCho-man Hardi, published in Life for Us, Bloodaxe Books, 2004. Reproduced by permis-sion of Bloodaxe Books, www.bloodaxebooks.com; and the poem ‘The Emigrée’ by Carol Rumens. Originally published in Star Whisper, Secker and Warburg, 1983. Reproduced by permission of the author.

The publisher would like to thank the following for their kind permission to reproduce their photographs:

Shutterstock.com: PJ photography 7, KKulikov 12, Melih Cevdet Teksen 15, nrqemi 17, Eng. Bilal Izaddin 20.123rf.com: Ealisa, 9,

All other images © Pearson Education

Pearson EdexcelGCSE (9-1) English LiteraturePoetry Anthology Supplement

The Pearson Edexcel (9-1) English Literature Poetry Anthology Supplement should be used to prepare students for assessment in:

Component 2 (1ET0/02) of the Pearson Edexcel Level 1/Level 2 GCSE (9-1) in English Literature

Belonging

We Refugees (2000) Benjamin Zephaniah

Us (2018) Zaffar Kunial

In Wales, Wanting to be Italian (2014) Imtiaz Dharker

Kumukanda (2017) Kayo Chingonyi

Jamaican British (2018)Raymond Antrobus

My Mother’s Kitchen (2004) Choman Hardi

The Émigrée (1983) Carol Rumens

To My Sister (1798) William Wordsworth

Sunday Dip (1800s) John Clare

Mild the Mist Upon the Hill (1839)Emily Brontë

Captain Cook (To MyBrother)(c.1820)Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Clear and Gentle Stream (1873)Robert Bridges

I Remember, I Remember (1914)Thomas Hood

Island Man (1984) Grace Nicholls

Peckham Rye Lane (2007) Amy Blakemore

5

6

7

8

10

11

12

13

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Belonging

It is the first mild day of March:

Each minute sweeter than before

The redbreast sings from the tall larch

That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

And grass in the green field.

My sister! (’tis a wish of mine)

Now that our morning meal is done,

Make haste, your morning task resign;

Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you—and, pray,

Put on with speed your woodland dress;

And bring no book: for this one day

We’ll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate

Our living calendar:

We from to-day, my Friend, will date

The opening of the year.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Love, now a universal birth,

From heart to heart is stealing,

From earth to man, from man to earth:

—It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more

Than years of toiling reason:

Our minds shall drink at every pore

The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,

Which they shall long obey:

We for the year to come may take

Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls

About, below, above,

We’ll frame the measure of our souls:

They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,

With speed put on your woodland dress;

And bring no book: for this one day

We’ll give to idleness.

To My Sister

William Wordsworth (1798)

Belonging

Belonging

The morning road is thronged with merry boys

Who seek the water for their Sunday joys;

They run to seek the shallow pit, and wade

And dance about the water in the shade.

The boldest ventures first and dashes in,

And others go and follow to the chin,

And duck about, and try to lose their fears,

And laugh to hear the thunder in their ears.

They bundle up the rushes for a boat

And try across the deepest place to float:

Beneath the willow trees they ride and stoop-

The awkward load will scarcely bear them up.

Without their aid the others float away,

And play about the water half the day.

5

10

Sunday Dip

John Clare (1800s)

Emily Brontё (1839)

6

Belonging

Sunday Dip

Mild the mist upon the hill

Telling not of storms to-morrow;

No, the day has wept its fill,

Spent its store of silent sorrow.

Oh, I’m gone back to the days of youth,

I am a child once more,

And ‘neath my father’s sheltering roof,

And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall

After a day of rain:

Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall

The horizon’s mountain-chain.

The damp stands in the long, green grass

As thick as morning’s tears;

And dreamy scents of fragrance pass

That breathe of other years.

5

10

15

Mild the mist upon the hill

Emily Brontё (1839)

7

Belonging

Do you recall the fancies of many years ago,

When the pulse danced those light measure that again it cannot know!

Ah! We both of us are alter’d, and now we talk no more

Of all the old creations that haunted us of yore.

Then any favourite volume was a mine of long delight,

From whence we took our future, to fashion as we might,

We liv’d again its pages, we were its chiefs and kings,

As actual, but more pleasant, than what the day now brings.

It was an August evening, with sunset in the trees,

When home you brought his Voyages who found the Fair South Seas.

We read it till the sunset amid the boughs grew dim;

All other favourite heroes were nothing beside him.

For weeks he was our idol, we sail’d with him at sea,

And the pond amid the willows the ocean seem’d to be.

The water-lilies growing beneath the morning smile,

We called the South Sea islands, each flower a different isle.

No golden lot that fortune could draw for human life,

To us seemed like a sailor’s, mid the storm and strife.

Our talk was of fair vessels that swept before the breeze,

And new discover’d countries amid the Southern seas.

Within that lonely garden what happy hours went by,

While we fancied that around us spread foreign sea and sky.

Ah! the dreaming and the distant no longer haunt the mind;

We leave in leaving childhood, life’s fairy land behind.

5

10

15

20

Captain Cook (To My Brother)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1800s)

8

Belonging

There is not of that garden a single tree or flower;

They have plough’d its long green grasses and cut down the lime-tree bower,

Where are the Guelder roses, whose silver used to bring, With the gold of the

laburnums, their tribute to the Spring.

They have vanish’d with the childhood that with their treasures play’d; The

life that cometh after, dwells in a darker shade.

Yet the name of that sea-captain, it cannot but recall

How much we lov’d his dangers, and we mourn’d his fall.

25

30

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1800s)

9

10

Clear and gentle stream!

Known and loved so long,

That hast heard the song,

And the idle dream

Of my boyish day;

While I once again

Down thy margin stray,

In the selfsame strain

Still my voice is spent,

With my old lament,

And my idle dream,


Where my old seat was

Here again I sit,

Where the long boughs knit

Over stream and grass

A translucent eaves:

Where back eddies play

Shipwreck with the leaves,

And the proud swans stray,

Sailing one by one

Out of stream and sun,

And the fish lie cool

In their chosen pool.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Many an afternoon

Of the summer day

Dreaming here I lay;

And I know how soon,

Idly at its hour,

First the deep bell hums

From the minster tower,

And then evening comes,

Creeping up the glade,

With her lengthening shade,

And the tardy boon,

Of her brightening moon.


Ere again I go

Where thou dost not flow,

Well does it beseem

Thee to hear again

Once my youthful song,

That familiar strain

Silent now so long :

Be as I content

With my old lament,

And my idle dream,


Clear and Gentle Stream

Robert Bridges (c.1873)

Belonging

Belonging

11

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!


The roses, red and white,

The vi’lets, and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,

— The tree is living yet!


Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!


The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now ‘tis little joy

To know I’m farther off from heav’n

Than when I was a boy.

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

Thomas Hood (1914)

I Remember, I Remember

Belonging

Morning

and island man wakes up

to the sound of blue surf

in his head

the steady breaking and wombing

wild seabirds

and fishermen pushing out to sea

the sun surfacing defiantly

from the east

of his small emerald island

he always comes back groggily groggily

Comes back to sands

of a grey metallic soar

to surge of wheels

to dull north circular roar

muffling muffling

his crumpled pillow waves

island man heaves himself

Another London day

5

10

15

20

Island Man

Grace Nichols (1984)

12

Belonging

Island Man

The sun, today –

it leaks desperation,

Gunmetal droplets of perspiration

gather.

I take the bus – through Peckham.

Knickers lie flaccid

in Primark.

Like salted jellyfish – tentacle pink,

grandmother mauve

briny in £2 racks of rainbow.

Peckham Rye lane is tight

as damp and crammed as a coconut shell

afro combs and mobile phones in the

white heat –

punctuated cornrows and seed beads,

cornflower scrunchies, liquorice weaves.

5

15

10

Peckham Rye Lane

13

Belonging

14

The delicate babies in KFC,

children, plaid-dressed children,

wailing, clutching drumsticks like

weapons.

Underfoot

the pavement is a gruesome meat,

each person is a sturdy hairbrush bristle

on its surface.

Angels gaze from the treetops

like William Blake

and radiate

comfort.

20

25

Amy Blakemore (2007)

Belonging

1515

Benjamin Zephaniah (2000)

I come from an ancient place

All my family were born there

And I would like to go there

But I really want to live.

I come from a sunny, sandy place

Where tourists go to darken skin

And dealers like to sell guns there

I just can’t tell you what’s the price.

I am told I have no country now

I am told I am a lie

I am told that modern history books

May forget my name.

We can all be refugees

Sometimes it only takes a day,

Sometimes it only takes a handshake

Or a paper that is signed.

We all came from refugees

Nobody simply just appeared,

Nobody’s here without a struggle,

And why should we live in fear

Of the weather or the troubles?

We all came here from somewhere.

We Refugees

30

35

40

45

50

5

I come from a musical place

Where they shoot me for my song And

my brother has been tortured

By my brother in my land.

I come from a beautiful place

Where they hate my shade of skin

They don’t like the way I pray

And they ban free poetry.


Where girls cannot go to school

There you are told what to believe

And even young boys must grow beards.

I come from a great old forest

I think it is now a field

And the people I once knew

Are not there now.


Nobody is safe,

All it takes is a mad leader

Or no rain to bring forth food,


We can all be told to go,

We can be hated by someone

For being someone.


Where the valley floods each year

And each year the hurricane tells us

That we must keep moving on.

20

25

10

15

Belonging

If you ask me, us takes in undulations –

each wave in the sea, all insides compressed –

as if, from one coast, you could reach out to

the next; and maybe it’s a Midlands thing

but when I was young, us equally meant me,

says the one, ‘Oi, you, tell us where yer from’;

and the way supporters share the one fate –

I, being one, am Liverpool no less –

cresting the Mexican wave of we or us,

a shore-like state, two places at once, God

knows what’s in it; and, at opposite ends

my heart’s sunk at separations of us.

When it comes to us, colour me unsure.

Something in me, or it, has failed the course.

I’d love to think I could stretch to it – us –

but the waves therein are too wide for words.

I hope you get, here, where I’m coming from.

I hope you’re with me on this – between love

and loss – where I’d give myself away, stranded

as if the universe is a matter of one stress.

Us. I hope, from here on, I can say it

and though far-fetched, it won’t be too far wrong.

Zaffar Kunial (2018)

5

15

20

10

US

16

Belonging

Is there a name for that thing

you do when you are young?

There must be a word for it in some language,

probably German, or if not just

asking to be made up, something like

Fremdlandischgehörenlust or perhaps

Einzumandererslandgehörenwunsch.

What is it called, living in Glasgow,

dying to be French, dying to shrug and pout

and make yourself understood

without saying a word?

Have you ever felt like that, being

in Bombay, wanting to declare,

like Freddy Mercury, that you are

from somewhere like Zanzibar?

What is it called? Being sixteen

in Wales, longing to be Italian,

to be able to say aloud,

without embarrassment, Bella! Bella!

lounge by a Vespa with a cigarette

hanging out of your mouth, and wear

impossibly pointed shoes?

5

15

20

10

In Wales, wanting to be Italian

Imtiaz Dharke r (2014)

US

17

Belonging

18

Raymond Antrobus (2018)

Kumukanda Kayo Chingonyi (2017)

Since I haven’t danced among my fellow initiates,

following a looped procession from woods at the edge

of a village, Tata’s people would think me unfinished –

a child who never sloughed off the childish estate

to cross the river boys of our tribe must cross

in order to die and come back grown.

I was raised in a strange land, by small increments:

when I bathed my mother the days she was too weak,

when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit

and white shoes to dress my mother’s body,

at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call

dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.

If my alternate self, who never left, could see me

what would he make of these literary pretensions,

this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine?

Would he be strange to me as I to him, frowning

as he greets me in the language of my father

and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father?

5

10

15

Belonging

19

Some people would deny that I’m Jamaican British.

Anglo nose. Hair Straight. No way I can be Jamaican British.

They think I say I’m black when I say Jamaican British

but the English boys at school made me choose: Jamaican, British?

Half-caste, half mule, house slave – Jamaican British.

Light skin, straight male, privileged – Jamaican British.

Ear callaloo, plantain, jerk chicken – I’m Jamaican.

British don’t know how to serve our dishes; they enslaved us.

In school I fought a boy in the lunch hall – Jamaican.

At home, told Dad, I hate dem, all dem Jamaicans – I’m British.

He laughed, said, you cannot love sugar and hate your sweetness,

took me straight to Jamaica – passport: British.

Cousins in Kingston called Jah-English,

proud to have someone in their family – British.

Plantation lineage, World War service, how do I serve

Jamaican British?

When knowing how to war is Jamaican British.

Raymond Antrobus (2018)

5

15

10

Jamaican British

after Aaron Samuels

Kumukanda Kayo Chingonyi (2017)

20 19

5

15

20

10

My Mother’s Kitchen

I will inherit my mother’s kitchen,

her glasses, some tall and lean others short and fat

her plates, an ugly collection from various sets,

cups bought in a rush on different occasions

rusty pots she doesn’t throw away.

“Don’t buy anything just yet”, she says,

“soon all of this will be yours”.

My mother is planning another escape

for the first time home is her destination,

the rebuilt house which she will furnish.

At 69 she is excited at starting from scratch.

It is her ninth time.

She never talks about her lost furniture

when she kept leaving her homes behind.

She never feels regret for things

only her vine in the front garden

which spread over the trellis on the porch.

She used to sing for the grapes to ripen,

sew cotton bags to protect them from the bees.

I will never inherit my mother’s trees.

Choman Hardi (2004)

Belonging

21

There was once a country… I left it as a child

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

for it seems I never saw it in November

which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.

The worst news I receive of it cannot break

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.

It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,

but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.

The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes

glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks

and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.

That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.

Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.

It may by now be a lie, banned by the state

but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.

I have no passport, there’s no way back at all

but my city comes to me in its own white plane.

It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;

I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

My city takes me dancing through the city

of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

They accuse me of being dark in their free city.

My city hides behind me. They mutter death,

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

Carol Rumens (1983)

5

15

20

25

10

The Émigrée

For information about Pearson Qualifications, including Pearson Edexcel, BTEC and LCCI qualifications visit qualifications.pearson.com

Edexcel and BTEC are registered trademarks of Pearson Education Limited

Pearson Education Limited. Registered in England and Wales No. 872828 Registered Office: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

VAT Reg No GB 278 537121

Cover image: Photolink. Photodisc 1999

Pearson is committed to reducing its impact on the environment by using responsibly sourced and recycled paper.

poetry anthology · 2020. 10. 7. · poetry anthology. acknowledgements prepared on 11th june 2019....

Documents